Wells Fargo Cash Back credit card offers 5% cash back on grocery, gas, and drugstore purchases for the first 6 months, a veritable gold mine for manufacturing spend. Milesperday and numerous Flyertalk posters report that Wells Fargo is sending out a warning letter to cardholders who have been abusing the card to cease the abuse or be shut down.
…We want to let you know that we recently reviewed your credit card account and found an unusual volume of purchases and/or payments made using this card. This type of activity may indicate misuse of the Wells Fargo credit card rewards program, and if it continues beyond receipt of this notice we will close your account and your rewards balance will be forfeited…
Image from milesperday.com
At the very least, it makes sense to stop using the card until all previous rewards get paid out. More sensibly, it’s probably not worth abusing at all since there’ll always be a doubt whether or not you’ll get the rewards. Hard to know how much is considered ‘safe.’
There have been rumors for a while that Wells Fargo plans to soon remove the 5% card entirely, probably to replace it with the new Cash Wise 1.5% card which is coming in June.
The Wells Fargo 5% card was really the last hold-out among credit cards that allowed users to manufacture unlimited amounts of spend at 5x rewards. Some people took this quite seriously manufacturing millions of dollars worth within those 6 months.
We still have the Old Blue Cash card which offers 5% cashback at grocery stores,drugstores, and gas stations, but it’s been capped at $50,000. And the TD 5% card is no longer available. The era of unlimited 5x comes to an end.
